With the expansion of cellular, Wifi, cable, fiber, and other Internet access points and the growing ubiquity of internet-capable mobile devices, messaging systems have expanded their reach and influence in the areas of social/professional networking, real-time collaboration, events, and general communication. Previously, bandwidth and hardware limitations made it impossible to share large amounts of data in real-time. Today's messaging systems include peer-to-peer and subscriber-based sharing of data and information seamlessly among a variety of different devices.
Unlike the limitations of early messaging systems such as Short Message Service (SMS), messaging systems are now capable of receiving and propagating video, audio, images, and uniform resource locators (URLs) of a variety of different content among users. Surfacing this myriad of content in a consistent and meaningful way is non-trivial. The interests of the users, the platform, and the content providers must all be considered. A fragmented experience across devices, between users, and among content hosted between different providers can lead to a frustrating and difficult user experience.